


Hell & Other Places

by Tepre



Series: Prompted one-shots & drabbles [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood, Draco's undercover name is Michael, M/M, Midge is backslang for Jim, and ghouls, and hell, and mice, and that is ALL you need to know, and the word 'love', makeouts are aplenty, sex is implied, spooky stuff!, which is also spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 09:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20964002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tepre/pseuds/Tepre
Summary: OR: 9 times Draco said ‘I love you’ and 1 time he didn’t.Draco & Harry are sent to investigate a haunted Bed & Breakfast.





	Hell & Other Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bixgirl1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bixgirl1/gifts).

> A short lil thing for bb bix, who prompted: "they're just fooling around, so where did that "I love you" come from and WHAT DID IT MEAN?????" 
> 
> AND APPARENTLY IT MEANT A SPOOKY HALLOWEEN MONTAGE?? Here you go! Happy spoopy season!

The first time he said it was sixteen hours into the undercover mission.****

The one he didn’t want to be on. Not with Harry, not in this muggle ditch of a town, not on the wettest days of the season, and certainly not while all of it felt an awful lot like they were being punished for the drama with the last case—even though Robards insisted it was nothing like that.

So when he first said it was purely to annoy, purely to needle at a stoic and still-pissed-off Harry. To make things harder than they already were, than it was necessary for them to be. When he first said it it was when they’d run into a small pub to escape the rain, when they’d sat down to eat while they were there, and the way he said it was like this:

“I do love you, Midge, but we’re absolutely not having venison for lunch.” He said it more to the waiter than Harry, then added, “Make that a clear broth and a side of bread, thank you, yes. No, no, certainly not beer, we’re not farm hands, thank you. And you can take the menu, we shan’t be ordering further, thank you.”

The waiter stumbled over the words yes and very well as he took the menu from Draco. Harry sat with his jaw clenched tight and a hot flush up his jaw. He stared at the table cloth, and Draco guessed he was counting himself down, which felt like an achievement but also like not nearly enough.

“Oh, cheer up, Midge, would you,” he said, stretched out a leg and let his ankle brush Harry’s, smiled around the room—as though surveying for nothing in particular.

“_Jim_,” was Harry’s correction, flat, tense. “And you’re overdoing it.”

Draco waved merrily at the couple sitting several tables over: the Gladwells from the B&B, whose room was two doors down from Draco and Harry’s and who’d spent the previous night trashing the place, foaming at the mouth, possessed by a band of wayward ghouls.

“Nonsense,” Draco said, still twisted in his seat, and the Gladwells hesitantly waved back.

*

The second time he said it was two days into the mission. It was after a long night where the Gladwells had left and the Berendsons had arrived and had been promptly used as vessels for a low-level demon trying to enter into the human realm.

Draco found Harry in the kitchen with the owner, asking questions in a way that was supposed to be subtle and curious but was nothing of the sort: Harry was stiff and steely-eyed and brooding, firing off inquiries at an increasing speed.

“Midge, my dear,” is what Draco said, coming up behind Harry, a soft hand at the dip of his waist. “Why are you bothering our host? Hasn’t she been lovely to you?”

“Oh,” started Mrs Till, a breathy giggle. “Surely, Jim didn’t mean it like—!”

“I’m awfully bored,” Draco told Harry, feeling him tense under the shift of his fingers, light on the fabric of Harry’s shirt. “Come, my Jim, come take me on a walk.”

Harry gave him a short look, lip curled like he wanted to growl, and Draco let his grin turn soppy, added a sweet, “Do love you, though,” and tugged a seething Harry back into the dining room.

They spent that evening having a hushed fight under three different silencing spells, Harry furiously insisting Draco was wasting time and Draco telling Harry in no short terms that he was single-handedly ruining the investigation and then all the tenants on the second floor had turned into mice and the conversation was promptly put on hold.

*

Third time Draco said it was a week into the investigation and less to annoy and more for show and perhaps also to do with the three odd glasses of wine he’d chased through over dinner. They were still sitting at the table, they and the other guests and Mr and Mrs Till, too, and someone was telling a story and Draco was woozy and had a distracted hand in Harry’s hair. Harry was peeling an apple for himself, no longer tense under Draco’s touch, oddly loose and slow. He sliced off a wedge of apple, gave it to Draco, and Draco accepted it and leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. As real lovers might, as lovers who slept in the same bed and not on transfigured heaps of pillows on the floor, who looked at one another, held one another, who put their lips on one another, who—

“I do love you, dear,” Draco told him, a whisper, still to the hollow of Harry’s cheek.

Harry turned, a minute movement, his short breath tart and sweet and his eyes cast down to Draco’s mouth. In the middle the hubbub of the long dinner table they shared a kiss: a soft one, a clinging peck, Draco’s hand still in Harry’s hair. It sent his heart beating fast, a drumming below the surface of his skin.

“Yeah,” Harry said, voice rough. And, “You’re really selling this.”

Draco wanted to say something more in reply, to say something like, _I haven’t even started_, to drag Harry’s mouth back to his, to lean into him, to feel him, but then a small circle of hell opened at the centre of the table and all the guests went black-eyed and blood started dripping from the walls and so there were other matters to attend to.

*

The fourth time was a week and a half in and they’d just saved the Rothbergs’ baby from being stolen by a half-goat creature and they were frantically making out in the hay barn, right by the patch of ashes that once was the goat man. Harry held him like Draco, too, ran the risk of melting into the underworld at any second: one hand under Draco’s shirt, one clamped at his thigh, hauling him half off the ground, half against the wall. He would not lean out of the kiss, kept it close and wet and their breaths were damp between them. It left Draco dizzy and breathless and blushing, even though it felt as though this was no time to be blushing: surely the blushing would’ve stopped at the first heavy glance, the first touch of lips? But blush he did, running hot and hotter still when Harry grumbled,

“Good job on the goat man,” into the soft spot under his jaw.

Draco made a sound, a horribly humiliating sound, and answered with a broken, “Not bad yourself,” then added a throaty, “Oh god,” when Harry pressed closer, the bulk of him a heavy anchor, a safe one. A dear one. “I love you,” he said, stupidly, and Harry said,

“What?”

And Draco said, “I’d love to,” all in a panic, and, “I’d love to do this with a, a bed involved.”

And Harry breathed into the crook of Draco’s neck, like he was smelling him, taking him in. It made Draco shiver. “Let’s,” Harry said. “Let’s go involve a bed.”

“Yes,” Draco said, rubbing his chin to the mess of Harry’s hair. “Let’s.”

*

The fifth time was later that night, with Harry asleep against him and under him and under the blur of sheets and there was just so much skin, _so much skin_, all of it warm and scarred and freckled and Draco was horrified, absolutely horrified.

“I love you,” he whispered into the dark, aghast. “Good lord, I do.”

Harry exhaled a deep breath in his sleep. His toes curled and uncurled against Draco’s calf, again and again.

“Oh lord,” Draco said, and put a soft hand to his mouth, fingers to his swollen lips. “Oh no.”

*

The sixth time was two weeks in, after they’d taken a walk down the cliffy path to find a safe communication spot to tell Robards that it most probably, certainly, most probably certainly the Tills’ teenage son who’d probably, accidentally, in a fit of rage, opened a few odd doors to hell down in the storage basement.

Robards said, _Oh okay then_, and asked if they needed backup. Draco said _yes_ as Harry said _no_ and they’d squabbled over the loud sea winds until the wand-o-gram connection fizzed, and broke up, and then disappeared altogether.

They argued some more and then made out against a tree. Draco’s hair flapped about and his hands were so cold and he kept them warm under Harry’s arms, under his jacket.

“Backup would just create chaos,” Harry said when Draco was catching his breath, face buried in the heat of his neck. “Bring attention to ourselves. We should find out more, first, make sure we know what we’re—”

“It’s not safe anymore,” Draco mumbled. He had a more sophisticated argument at some point, but it’d been worn thin and syrupy in his mind at the feel of Harry’s mouth below his ear.

“I’ll keep you safe,” Harry said, a horrible smile in his voice, and the image of his from that morning flashed through Draco’s mind: when Draco tried to get out of bed and Harry, waking up, asked him where he was going. Draco had said, _To wash my face,_ and Harry’d muttered a simple, _No,_ and pulled him back into the warm sheets. They’d been slow and stupid and Harry had looked so vulnerable without his glasses. His eyes bright, impossibly green.

“I love you,” Draco confessed with the cliffs behind them, but the wind stole his words and carried them away and Harry didn’t hear.

*

The seventh time was after they’d managed to open the door.

The black hole gaping behind the frame was sucking the contents of the house into its maw, chairs and tables and vases, and Draco had pressed himself back against the wall. The noise was overwhelming, and the debris flying around made it hard to see what was going on.

Harry kissed him on the mouth, once and hard, before making to jump into the void.

“I love you!” Draco shouted, and then Harry was gone.

*

The eighth time it was after the void spit Harry back out and with the gates of actual literal hell cracking open in the storage-basement floor of Mr and Mrs Till’s destroyed B&B.

Their son, Victor, was lying unconscious in a corner, his face pale and a trickle of blood running down his temple. But he was breathing. Thank god, he was still breathing.

“How long has this been going on!” Harry shouted over the roaring din of a million demons set on fire.

“Hard to say, really!” Draco shouted back, his raincoat dancing wildly in the storm. “It sort of just came out and then it was like, all right, I guess!”

“You guess!” Harry shouted, the steaming heart of the netherworld rising up around them. “You guess you love me!”

“Yeah!” Draco laughed, madly, shook his head. “I guess I love you!”

Harry laughed in reply, just as mad, looked up—at a loss—then held out his right hand for Draco’s to take: palm up, the diagonal cut still bleeding. “Okay!” Harry shouted. “If we make it through this, remind—!”

But Draco didn’t let him finish. He took Harry’s hand into the cradle of his own slashed palm. He lifted their grip over Hades’ creaking jaws, and held on tight.

*

The ninth time was when Harry was alive and not dead, as he too often was, far too often, Draco thought, laughing and crying as Harry blinked awake, his head in Draco’s lap.

The remains of the B&B were still coming down in flecks of ash around them. A few fires were burning nearby. A few feet over, Victor was hugging his mother, weeping into her arms.

“Hello,” Harry croaked, cracking a wobbly smile up at Draco.

“Hello,” Draco sobbed, his hands on Harry’s face, pushing his hair back. He leaned down to kiss him, laughed again, said, “Hello, you daft bint.”

“You love me,” was Harry’s reply to this, as though he’d just remembered their last conversation. This followed quickly by a groan as he tried to move, lean up into Draco.

“Lord help me,” Draco said, pressing his forehead to Harry’s. He whispered: “I do. I do.”

*

The tenth time he didn’t say it out of principle. He held the words back like it hurt him, like stones held below the tongue, ones he could not swallow, could not spit, and so they made him quiet: at St Mungo’s, holding Harry’s hand through it all. In Robards’ office, when he wanted to reach across the divide of their chairs but couldn’t. Back at Harry’s cottage, in the kitchen, when Harry hovered close but would not kiss him, just held his face in his hands and their foreheads pressed together and had them breathe together, noses brushing.

Not in the aching silence of Harry’s bedroom, when it all suddenly felt impossibly new all over again and made Draco nervous, made him shake under Harry’s touch. He closed his eyes against it, sucked Harry’s thumb into his mouth, listened to the seagulls outside and the beat of Harry’s heart thudding against his back.

Harry was slow as he moved inside of him, his breaths short and hot against Draco’s neck. Draco kept his lips pressed together, moaned with his mouth closed, his hand twisted behind him, holding on to Harry’s hair.

“Do you regret it?” Harry asked, later, his eyes restless on Draco’s face. He had his thumb to the plump rise of Draco’s bottom lip.

Draco closed his eyes, and blushed at his own words before he’d spoken them: “Would you say it?”

Harry’s thumb moved to the corner of his mouth. He leaned in to kiss Draco in that same spot, kissed the plump of his bottom lip. The wet cupid’s bow of his top lip. He breathed, “That I love you?”

“Yes,” Draco whispered, helpless, returning the kiss. Harry’s hand slipped to cup the back of his neck, the scarred slash on his palm dragging against Draco’s skin. Draco licked into his mouth, rolled his body closer, hitched his leg up Harry’s thigh. Harry pulled back for a moment to say,

“I faced literal hell for you.”

Draco smiled, shakily, eyes unfocused. “Surely not just for me. Society, the world as we know it, the good people of—”

“No,” Harry said, kissing the tip of Draco’s nose. The corner of his smile. “Just for you.”

“So you love me?” it came out small, half into their next kiss.

“Mmm.” Harry rolled them over, settled between Draco’s legs. “I must,” he said, playful, then chased it with a softer, a truer: “I do.”


End file.
